The Massachusetts Fair Food That Somehow Makes Jelly Beans Even Better

Fair food is the wild child of the American culinary family. Year after year, fairs around the country roll out Frankensteinian mashups of salty, sweet, and deep fried everything, and good golly is it delicious. In pop culture, these wild inventions have become particularly associated with midwestern fairs. Was anybody actually surprised when the Minnesota state fair introduced deep fried ranch dressing? Doubtful. But while the Midwest draws millions of hungry eyes, a slew of other fairs are pumping out equally inventive treats, and there's a particular entry from the Northeast that really raises eyebrows.

The epicenter of fair food in the American Northeast is the Eastern States Exposition, better known today as The Big E. Held every autumn in Springfield, Massachusetts since starting in 1917, The Big E is the East Coast's largest fair. It's also a prosperous breeding ground for culinary inventions, and there may be no more notable offering than the deep-fried jelly beans. The sweet snack is made by dunking the chewy candies in funnel cake batter and then deep-frying them to a golden crisp. It's the standard fair food formula — take a popular snack (or ingredient — battered butter is also popular) and fry it — it basically never fails.

Suffice to say, the average person doesn't eat a lot of hot jelly beans, so it's hard to prepare for what the deep-fried jelly bean experience is really like. The trip through boiling hot oil causes the jelly beans to melt inside their funnel cake casing. What's left is a crispy dough ball with a gooey, fruity filling. The treat often draws comparisons to jelly donuts, but in a more bite-sized delivery system, sort of like Polish paczki donuts.

Although The Big E has garnered particular attention for its deep fried jelly beans, it's not the only fair where you can find them. The Texas State Fair, which appropriately lives by a go big or go home mentality, has also featured jelly beans fried in funnel cake batter. They've even shown up at the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver, Canada. Could an international hit be in the making? Leave it to a state fair to completely obliterate jelly beans' status as a gluten-free candy. Deep fried jelly beans are bound to be controversial, but with an idea this wacky, you've just got to try it once.